Windows 10: How to check for drivers for free?

How can I find out all the driver I have and find out if there are any new ones available. I was wondering if there are any free programs that can check my pc for me.

Any ideas please.

:)

 

How to check for unnecessary drivers in Device Manager?

Hi,

I'm wondering if there is a way to check for unnecessary drivers in Device Manger. I can see that there are many greyed out (from hidden tab) and duplicated drivers or drivers end with #number. How do I know which drivers that are not currently used by the
system and safe to uninstall? I believe there are drivers from older versions of windows, unused peripherals and even from previous installation of windows after laptop recovery/reset.



Thank you!

 

How to check for unnecessary drivers in Device Manager?

Greyed-out devices in Device Manager are not unnecessary drivers. They represent devices that were once connected to your computer but are no longer. USB devices are a common example.

Windows ships with hundreds (maybe even thousands) of device drivers that make plug and play possible. Since you will probably not use 95% of those devices, you might consider their drivers unnecessary. However, their presence in Windows does not affect
your computer in any negative way.

Your computer also contains lots of previous version drivers that make it possible to roll-back to an older version of a driver if a new version that you (or Windows Update) installed doesn't work out. The presence of these older drivers also doesn't affect
your computer's performance in any negative way.

If you want to remove the greyed-out devices, you certainly can. You won't harm your computer. But you're not really accomplishing anything.

Just now I checked my own Device Manager: I've got 41 greyed-out devices. And who knows how many old drivers. (I'm not going to start rolling back drivers just to find out.) Yet, my computer runs very well. Really, it's nothing you need to worry about.

 

You can manually check, using device manager to see if their are missing devices, or problematic devices.
It is suggested that you do not use 3rd party apps for driver updates, as windows update should do the job, besides a few other specifics which according to your rig i don't think you will run into.
If you really want to use a 3rd party app, then i have used this one before just to see how it works, it safely worked for me.
Download Driver Booster 2 Free, the most Effective Driver Updater, to Update Drivers in ONE Click - IObit
Once again, if the drivers work and are not problematic its suggested to leave them alone unless you want to take advantage of the latest gaming software, etc.

 

Hello, dawnrenee1988. Welcome to Windows Ten Forums.

In addition in case you don't know how to open Device Manager press the Windows key and start typing Device Manager then press Enter. When Device Manager opens check at the left. If there are problem devices then a yellow warning triangle will appear. If you see one report back here.

 

Faster if you right click on start button or Win+X then select Device Manager

 

This is how people end up with BSODs.
The only time you need to update a driver is if there is an issue with the current driver.

Since Windows 7, MS has been doing a great job providing drivers that work with Windows. Windows 8 was nearly perfect in that area and Win10 is carrying that effort forward.

I strongly recommend NOT using a third party driver finder. Let Windows manage the drivers.

If and only if there is a feature that you absolutely need in a newer driver, then and only then can you test install it. If it causes issues you can roll back to the previous driver. This way you control what gets installed, not a 3rd party 'helper' that cause issues on some machines.

If you really get stuck, TenForums has a bunch of folks that are volunteering their time to help other members.

 

It is eh? *really

 

Windows update is not perfect and won't work with (legacy) devices that are no longer supported or messing up current working drivers. In which case, you will need to roll back, have backups of installers or drivers in place (in case a manufacturer ceases operations) or directly from manufacturer support pages. And as others said, only update drivers if you are experiencing issues with the current one. Otherwise, just leave it well enough alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it... *Wink

 

You could copy & paste the VEN and DEV ids (from hardware manager) into

DevID.info – free driver search and update utility
PCI Vendor and Device Lists